


and now, perhaps, to draw the curtains against the storm

by harriet_vane_94



Category: The Sound of Music - Rodgers/Hammerstein/Lindsay & Crouse
Genre: Gen, I also don't know at what age Georg was promoted to Captain, I have a lot of feelings about Georg Von Trapp (tm), I plucked one from the ether anyways, does Frau Schmidt have a christian name ??, tw: alcohol abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 10:27:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24968191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harriet_vane_94/pseuds/harriet_vane_94
Summary: She has been with him since he was a boy, and yet never has she seen him like this - her heart aches more for him than herself.
Kudos: 8





	and now, perhaps, to draw the curtains against the storm

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hey hello - first ever work on AO3, I watched The Sound of Music and gosh!! I had an awful lot of Thoughts about Georg Von Trapp and his wife, Agathe. So y'know. Here you are I guess!!  
> I am.... 75% sure Frau Schmidt is not called by her christian name in the film?? so I gave her one ?  
> Feel free to review and that if you like!

Rain battered the streets of Salzburg, the water running in rivulets down the cobblestones, market traders huddling beneath their awnings as the water teemed from the sky, grumbling to one another as they watched the few patrons who had ventured outside, scatter for some place where they might be dry. Grey clouds had been gathering for most of the day, growing darker and angrier as time had worn on - the whole city cast under some kind of pall. They waited a little longer and finally packed up themselves, chuntering as they did so - shaking out awnings and folding them away, packing their wares and escaping the deluge, resigning themselves to a day with little profit.

Frau Schmidt glanced out of the windows at the rain and sighed. It splashed down onto the patio, soaking the flowers through, rose petals bending under the weight, scattered on the grass like tiny jewels, pockets of yellow and pink nestled amongst the lush green..  
She needed to remind the gardener of his duties, the Captain expected the gardens to be immaculate - they were an extension of the house and a reflection on him.. The fountain needed cleaning, the gravel would have to be raked around the front, the shrubs needed trimming.. She added the idea to her mental index of what she would tackle in the days coming. She had sent the undermaid, Brigitte, out for some vegetables - they were needed for dinner.. she wondered if the girl had persevered or if she had allowed herself to grow distracted, or discouraged by the weather. Doubtless she would return empty handed. Her thoughts turned to other alternatives that might be offered to the Captain, the children and the baroness..

It hit her with such force then, her hand reaching out to press against the bannister of the stairs.  
Oh.  
She had been trying to continue as though nothing had happened, as though all were as it ought to be.  
There would be no baroness at dinner.  
She was gone.  
Frau Schmidt felt a sudden ache in her chest as she ascended the stairs and moved across to the family wing of the house, her ears pricked for any sort of noise.  
The children, poor dears, were as silent as dormice, and she might have wept for it.  
How full the house had been just a week and a half ago, of their laughter and voices - their singing too; Freidrich was learning the violin and Liesl the guitar. Both of them were absolutely atrocious, but presently she would have given anything to hear the caterwauling nonsense rather than this blistering, awful silence.  
She could hear her own footsteps on the wooden floor of the corridor, resisting the urge to press her ear to the door of the children’s nursery. There was a faint weeping as she passed and she faltered. Her first duty was to the running of the house, but she had been Georg’s nursemaid and that maternal instinct still lingered within her; eager to reach out and soothe the hurt she could hear in the small voices behind the door.  
Her gaze moved however, to the closed door some way down the corridor.  
The master's study.  
The door had slammed shut some days past and had not swung open since - or at least she had not seen it. Franz had been the one to take meals up, but he often returned with them untouched, congealed even - the cook looking upon the waste of her work with some sense of agony as it was scraped, useless and inedible into the bins.  
Hanna Schmidt took a breath as she let her knuckles graze against the door, hating the abruptness of the sound, hating herself for the tentative way she had done it. She had looked after Georg since he was a boy - but this, this was different to anything either of them had weathered before. 

No response to her tiny knock and so instead, she pushed the door, surprised how easily it had yielded to the gentle pressure.  
Not locked.  
If Gretl had toddled in here! Or Brigitta.. It did not bear thinking of..  
She blinked, the room before her was shuttered and dim, the drapes pulled tight over the windows, blocking even the grey light from entering. She could hardly make out the shapes of furniture as she stepped further into the room and let the door swing shut behind her. Her query over dinner now felt small and insignificant, she herself felt.. ludicrous at this intrusion. This room was not one for company, it stank of solitude, of undiluted agony that made her knees buckle as she took a tentative step forward in the dimness.  
She found him, her eyes adjusting to the lack of light and she lifted a hand to cover her mouth.  
Just for a second, Hanna recalled when he had come home the first time, when he had been made Captain. The house had been full to the brim with his friends as they celebrated, champagne flowing endlessly. They had all been so very proud of him, the young man with a commanders bearing, his uniform cut beautifully, the medals on his chest glinting, the laughter clear in his eyes as he looked to Agathe on his arm - a fairytale for the both of them. Prince Charming and his princess, they held court here in Salzburg and it had been an endless joy.  
There was no joy now - it could not be the same man before her.  
He remained hunched over his desk, a thin hand clutching at a bottle of some undisclosed alcohol, oblivious to any entrance. Hanna moved a little closer and winced. Brandy - it lifted from him like a fog and she choked on it, the smell sour in her nostrils.  
Georg looked up, reacting to some noise she had made unwittingly, then and she had to bite down on her tongue.

He was too thin, suddenly - and she thought of all those abandoned meals, no doubt forsaken for the numbing effect of the alcohol still in his hands. She could see the sharp rise of his shoulders in the thin shirt, his cheekbones too stark in the dim light, jawline shadowed with stubble and his hair was lank over his forehead. He looked at her blearily, his eyes devoid of anything - a shudder ran down her spine. There was some sort of agony there, she could not find the words for it, it was eating him from the inside, stripping him of everything until he was hardly himself.  
“Sir..” Her voice was soft, the one she had used with him when he was a fussy toddler, unable to sleep - but then it had been Georg and he had been a child, with problems easily solved and soothed.  
But this man? She did not know how she might help.  
His next words would have left her on her knees had she not retained the presence of mind to remain standing before her employer.  
“Agathe, is gone, Hanna.. She’s.. gone..” He spoke with such quiet, unnervingly dignified pain as though he walked a knife edge; the voice he had used at her funeral, not once breaking or pausing; because he could not. It was not permitted. Not for him.  
There was was silence between the two of them for a long time, and then he spoke again with a frighteningly articulate savagery that made her step back.  
“She is gone.. There is nothing.. nothing here…” His eyes were suddenly sharp, fathomless as he looked at her, rage contorting his face into something she had never seen before.  
Her heart pounded in her chest.  
“Sir.. The children.. I—“ the words felt lame, pathetic even to her own ears - but he had to remember his children, they needed him - and she held her breath, braced for some sort of impact, her eyes flickering about the room, waiting to see what would happen next.  
It came, but she was not the target. The bottle he had clutched was hurled across the room, meeting the wall with a crash that resounded throughout the entire building.  
“Those children. I cannot bear to look upon them, Hanna.. They look too much like.. her..” His voice cracked, severing the world they stood upon in two.  
“Georg..” Her own voice shook, her small, work roughened hand reaching out and pressing against his knee. “You need time.. but the children.. they need you.. please..”  
He didn’t look at her and eventually she withdrew her hand, backing slowly from the room.  
The rain continued throughout the night.

The following morning, the Captain was at breakfast, his features exhausted and laced with pain, but his voice tight and controlled as he laid out his commands for the household.  
Uniforms, commands, lessons— a governess..  
A poor substitute for a mother, for a father too, indeed.  
Hanna Schmidt looked at the serious young man in his immaculately pressed uniform as he spoke to them as though they were upon one of his ships and could not find it in her heart to be frustrated or displeased. His gaze passed over her as though the previous night had never occurred.  
She took a deep breath as he left and clapped her hands.  
“You heard the Captain. Move.”


End file.
